


The Best Challenge You Never Won

by amusewithaview



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Academy Era, Flirting, Male-Female Friendship, Starfleet Academy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-13
Updated: 2011-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:29:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You wanna know why you really wanna screw me, Jim?  Because it's easier than being my friend."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Challenge You Never Won

**Author's Note:**

> This was spawned by one-too-many fics where Uhura is either a crazy bitch trying to break up Spock and Kirk or just plain mean to poor Jim. I wanted to look at Jim/Nyota friendship and what that might be like or how it might start. The dialogue in the summary popped into my head and I had to write this piece or go nuts.
> 
> Also, there is an implication of future Uhura/McCoy. I have no idea where that came from. Seriously.

She does not think she will ever see the well-educated townie who (possibly) ruined her chances with the _Enterprise_ again. She sits in her small room and ignores her temporary roommate almost as easily as the other girl ignores her, kneading her temples and wondering how on earth a night out relaxing turned into a barroom brawl and possible reprimand.

(She will later learn that the times when a "night out" involving the aforementioned "well-educated townie" do _not_ end in barroom brawls are the exception to a well-established rule. She will learn this through trial and error. She will discover that this phenomenon is not limited to Earth-based establishments and she will join an irritable doctor in the pessimistic view that death by bar fight is more plausible than death by liver failure - even taking into account the copious amounts of alcohol required to befriend "well-educated townies" and stay even remotely sane.)

Seeing _That Guy_ in the shuttle the next day will amuse her and annoy her... but the former is far stronger than the latter. Is, in fact, far stronger than it should be. He should annoy her, and he does, but there is something in his irrepressible attitude that she cannot help but admire. Something in him that says, "You may not like me, but you _will_ acknowledge me," and she cannot help but appreciate him for it.

She hears rumors of his genius, but does not pay them much heed. His is the sort of charisma that blinds people to his faults, she thinks. Their first class together is basic Tellarite linguistics: his first required credit in non-human languages and an extracurricular for her. She realizes five seconds after he starts a screaming, top-of-the-lungs argument with their instructor (who cannot help but show her pleasure at finding a human who _understands_ with the faint flushing of the skin under her ears) that he is far more than merely a "well-educated townie".

She spends fifteen minutes looking up his files, which lead her to his father's, which leads her to the realization that the chip on his shoulder might be entirely earned (and nursed).

(In the future she will understand that his daddy-issues are the tip of a _very large_ iceberg.)

He hunts her down after that first class, smile too cocky and eyes too bright.

Their second direct interaction proves to be more of the same: he flirts, she dodges.

"You know, I'm not such a bad guy once you get to know me."

She give him a level look.

"Okay, maybe I am," he says easily, "but, _baby_ , I'm the right kind of bad."

"I really, _really_ doubt that." She doesn't. "And don't call me 'baby'."

He grins, "You could always tell me your name."

"I could," she agrees, "but you haven't earned it."

(That, she later realizes without a smidgen of regret, was when she inadvertently threw down the gauntlet.)

He proceeds to flirt with her mercilessly, constantly, and _graphically_ whenever their paths cross. She doesn't want to think that he goes out of his way to run into her, but they encounter each other far more than a second-year languages track and a whatever-the-heck-he-is ought to. Their interactions are always the same: flirt, rebuff, banter, exit. It is a well-choreographed dance that leaves no-one satisfied save for the observers.

She knows that he sees her as a challenge, as stuck-up, as the one who won't say 'yes'.

She wonders why his blindness to the other possibilities is so _frustrating_.

Things come to a head during her third year, his... it's hard to tell. She is out drinking with her roommate, a free Orion with a penchant for booze (not that it affects her in the same way that it does humans) and sex (which could possibly be more accurately termed her 'drug of choice'), when he and his doctor-friend enter the bar.

His eyes light up as soon as he spots her, brightening in a way that almost makes her want to question his ancestry (surely a full human couldn't have eyes so impossibly blue?) and then he is beside her. He grins at the number of empty shot glasses before her (too many) and orders her a shot of Jack (he remembers. This does not surprise her).

"Uhura, you are looking positively _drunk_ ," he informs her gleefully.

"Not enough beer in the world, Kirk."

"Ah, but that's why I got you _whiskey!_ "

And suddenly she is sick of it: sick of his smiles and his flirting. Sick of the way he looks at her and still doesn't seem to _see_ her. She is sick of this dance, sick of this game, sick of this whatever-it-is-you-want-to-call-it because at the end of the day what it means is that here is yet another person who sees her Starfleet-regulation skirt before the mind behind the eyes.

"You want to know the real reason you want to fuck me, _Jim?_ " she asks him, a sneer on her lips as she contorts the pet name that only the doctor uses into an ugly slur. She throws back the shot, ignoring the surprise on his face at this sudden deviation from their well-worn act. She turns and looks him in his impossibly blue eyes: "Because it's easier than being my _friend_."

She leaves, thinking somewhere that it's sad that it had to end like this. Sad, but typical.

(She will later realize that if James Tiberius Kirk prides himself on anything it is being as from _typical_ as he can get.)

She is surprised when he shows up at the weekly meeting of the Xenolingistics Club. She is startled when he makes a point of sitting beside _her_ and not the obviously-gagging-for-it blonde with the gravity-defying bust. She is absolutely _shocked_ when he not only _does not_ flirt with her, but engages in an intellectually stimulating dialogue about the similarities between Vulcan and Romulan linguistics as they relate to the concepts of war and family, all without ever once allowing his gaze to stray lower than her nose.

They walk out of the meeting together, still arguing, and McCoy is waiting for them, leaning against the wall opposite with his arms folded across his chest and a knowing expression on his face. The look confuses her, and when she turns to Kirk, he has an odd pink tinge to his cheeks and the crests of his ears.

McCoy corners her two days (and three engaging discussions with Kirk) later.

"He always saw you as more than just a skirt," he says abruptly, "that's just his way."

She has always been a fast study, and not just of books, so she is not thrown off by this sudden leap into a delicate topic. "That doesn't make it alright," she tells him, "'his way' isn't always the right way."

"Not with you."

" _Never_ with me."

He nods, a small gleam in his eyes, and offers her his hand, "I don't believe we've been properly introduced. My name is Leonard McCoy."

(This is the beginning of a beautiful relationship, she thinks right then and not later. She thinks 'relationship' and not one of the other hundred words she could use because she does not have a habit of lying to herself, never has.)

Kirk pops up again later that day with snacks and study guides for his current language class (Romulan) asking if she wants to study. The hopeful look in his eyes and the tense set of his shoulders says, louder than his words, that _actual studying_ is all that will be going on.

(Unless she offers more. _She won't. Ever._

He still sees her as a challenge. _She makes him think. Makes him fight for her regard._

As a bit stuck-up. _He thinks she needs to loosen up, sometimes, and tells her so._

And she's still the one who never said 'yes'. _He's surprisingly okay with that._ )

 

 

 


End file.
